November 29, 2009

Going through an old notebook, I discovered notes from a talk given ten years ago by Catherine Alington, at that time a PhD student in landscape ecology at Colorado State University-Fort Collins.

She researched fire cycles on both sides of the northern Sangre de Cristo range, and in some cases was able to go back three centuries. Her work was published in her dissertation, "Fire History and Landscape Pattern in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains" (1998).

According to my notes, some big fire years--when multiple valleys burned--were 1636, 1703, and 1851. Don't you wish you knew what was going on then?

Low-elevation forests burned on the average every 30 years, while higher elevations, above 10,000 feet, burned about every 100 years.

After teaching at the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana and at the University of Wellington, New Zealand (her home), she is now, according to Linked-In, the head of professional development for the New Zealand Police.

November 25, 2009

Would Henry David Thoreau have had a blog? I am sure of it. Anyone who would edit his autobiography so that two years of experience fit neatly into one literary year has demonstrated the capability of self-romanticizing that blogging requires.

If you want to be alone, it’s important to know, you can never get far enough away; humans and their noise producing machines are everywhere. One thought that helps me, is to think of myself as an alien dropped off on a planet of apes. Then I can just sit back and enjoy the show—like going to the zoo.

I cannot get it out of my mind. Maybe it's because M. and I often go several days without talking to anyone else in person (not counting email). Without her (and the dogs), I would soon be wondering the same thing.

November 23, 2009

Late this morning I broke off from editing a journal article on new religious movements in Ukraine and rousted M. from the sofa (where she was reading Julia Child's My Life in France) to go geocaching.

After all, we own a low-end GPS gadget (Garmin Geko 201), and I knew from the main geocaching web site that there are a couple dozen caches near our home. That comes of living near national forest just off a designated "scenic byway."

M. had not heard of geocaching before, but she likes treasure hunts and tromping through the woods.

We found four caches in short order, picking off the low-hanging fruit, so to speak—sites near roads.

Geocaching's older Anglophile cousin is letterboxing. I know a couple of people who do that too, chiefly in urban areas. From my perspective, letterboxing seems a little club-ier, more concerned with aesthetics (carving your own rubber stamps!) and mental puzzle-solving.

Does that make letterboxing more like fly-fishing, while geocaching is like cruising the lake with a sonar fish-finder? Either way, you still have to catch a fish.

November 16, 2009

Early in her falconry memoir Lift, Rebecca O'Connor writes, "Predator or prey, you choose."

As she later elaborates, "Predator worship is an odd thing, but perhaps not so odd for a woman. I am aware that I am more prey than predator."

That dialectic--woman as prey and predator--spirals through Lift, a book that is intensely erotic in the original sense, being about passion, desire, and union with the Beloved, even when the beloved is a bird.

So it's no surprise that her relationship with her first peregrine falcon, Anakin, partakes of First Love, right down to the candlelight dinner of the first duck that the peregrine has brought down. At that point in her life, she admits, her relationship with Anakin "is the only honest relationship." When frustrated, she catches herself "berating the bird like a lover."

Yet with falconry, there is a bond, but no possession. Battles of wills, development of trust, relationship-building--all of that--but still a falcon does not need the falconer. As O'Connor tries to tell herself when Anakin has disappeared while hunting, "The falcon and I will both be fine on our own."

A lot of the back story of Lift involves things that were done--or threatened--to the author in her younger days, which add poignancy to her struggle to become--in some areas--the predator, confronted with the mysteries of death and blood.

"Maybe I was wrong. Given the choice I would be the predator. Maybe I'm a hunter after all."

Whether you have felt that bond with an animal or not, by reading Lift, you might learn, in the author's words, "a way of thinking, a means of experiencing life." Not just falconers, but all true hunters, share O'Connor's experience of having touched "nature's senseless violence, clung her stray miracles [and had them] alter our beliefs."

November 14, 2009

It's snowing here in the Wet Mountains, a wet, soaking snow that is melting in. This would be a good "desk day," especially as I am only partway through sorting out everything on my desk--the ten days' worth of mail, the receipts and notes, etc. from the conference, the new books for reading and/or review.

One review must be completed today, or I will hate myself.

But I am fidgety. M. and I spent parts of six days on trains, four days in Montreal, one day in Chicago, an afternoon in Albany, and an evening in Schenectady. It was wearing.

(Note: we rode six different Amtrak trains, and all were on time. Someone is doing something right. If you have a layover at Schenectady, refuel at Katie O'Byrne's, hang out on Jay Street.)

On the Adirondack, traveling through upstate New York along Lake Champlain, I would see some little dirt road winding off into the swampy woods, and I wanted to be off the train and walking along it with one of the dogs.

Now it is just about attitude. I am refined and/or serious, don't mess with me. Not asceticism. Urban grime might be an issue, but it cannot be the issue.

In Montreal, where sports team-themed clothing was not as common downtown as in Chicago (although it exists), black seemed almost mandatory.

I probably stood out for wearing one of about four khaki trench coats that I spotted.

Downtown Chicago is noisier than Montreal. For one thing, it has the elevated trains. For another, there always seems to be large construction projects underway, whereas I saw none in Montreal, just street repairs.

People walk faster in Chicago too. But my candidate for a fast-walking city, believe it or not, is Dublin, based on earlier visits there.

November 12, 2009

Walking toward our eastbound train at Chicago's Union Station one evening last week, I saw people pointing at something on the train tracks, below the platform.

I looked. It was a wild turkey, very dead. And very out of place in downtown Chicago.

Then I put some things together.

M. and I had arrived on the Southwest Chief, on that set of tracks, about four hours earlier.

We had seen wild turkeys from the window several times in Kansas and Missouri.

One of them must have flown too late, like the turkeys back home that Shelby the collie chased, not taking to the air until her nose was practically touching their tail feathers.

It was gone today, of course. Someone probably tossed it in the trash.

But when your train enters the long underground train shed, you pass through a dim and sooty passage where I always expect to see rats the size of spaniels scurrying along, not to mention hypothetical asphalt-adapted coyotes.

I imagine one of the above, squinting against the bright lights closer to the station, scurrying out of the shadows to snatch up this unexpected bounty, larger than the usual city pigeons.

November 07, 2009

In the beginning, rifle and shotgun stocks were brown-stained wood, except for some playboy-types who went with blond wood. White spacers added accents.

Then came black molded synthetic stocks, then camouflage patterns likewise, plus laminated wood, which I think looks good sometimes. (My waterfowling shotgun has a camo-pattern stock, but I really got it for the non-reflective metal finish, since much Colorado duck hunting is done in sunny weather.)
And now pink.

A lot of pink handguns and pink-stocked long guns are out there now. Who would buy them?

Hunters and target shooters said that the most popular color scheme was camouflage, with 62% of males and 60% of females chiming in with this preference. Other popular colors included black, green and brown, with pink getting 15.4% of women's votes. Again, the lowest preference for both genders included brighter colors -- white, yellow and multicolored. Thirty percent overall did not factor in color when buying firearms and related equipment.

The real problem with the climate-change is how quickly it has become politicized -- or possibly "religion-ized."

I admit that I am surprised by that development, but not in a good way.

Unfortunately, doom-and-gloom is a standby of environmental writing (sometimes with reason--Dust Bowl, anyone?). You can get books analyzing such writing, which has always leaned towards the jeremiad more than the celebration.

When the doom does not occur exactly as predicted, however, the skeptics say, "Oh, there was nothing to that.

Excessive statements about the decline of Arctic sea ice, severe weather events and the probability of extreme warming in the next century detract from the credibility of robust findings about climate change, they said.

Such claims can easily be rebutted by critics of global warming science to cast doubt on the whole field. They also confuse the public about what has been established as fact, and what is conjecture.

Short-term fund-raising goals by environmental groups are one big reason for the exaggeration.